RUTHFULLY YOURS

Progressives like to paint their ideological opposition as violent, hateful, and all sorts of other unpleasant things, but always held the Left up as the beacon of civility and tolerance.

As we get into the Trump Era, we are seeing their true colors. They’re like the aliens in the ’80s miniseries “V.” The progressives have pulled off their human skin, and what’s beneath is horrifying.

The latest example comes from Emerson College in Boston. As The College Fix reports, students there have been harassed for months for daring to be conservative or libertarian:

The students said they knew when they decided to attend Emerson they were entering a left-leaning campus. After all, the school is located in the heart of one America’s most liberal cities.

Yet, how that progressivism transcends campus is what surprises them. They described a hostile campus where right-of-center opinions are strongly opposed and students who peddle them can be susceptible to name calling and other forms of bullying.

Aside from being called a white supremacist, Kaufman said she’s been called a racist to her face.

“It’s hostile and there’s a lot of tension, just sitting in a classroom, you can literally feel these eyes on you and all this hate if they know who you are,” she said.

Meanwhile, Picone said it’s not unusual for him to be called out for his gender and ethnicity.

“Anything I will say will be dismissed because I’m a straight white male. As if that has anything to do with the argument I’m saying,” he said.

Freshman Lexie Kaufman claims the harassment has been so terrible that she is transferring. She’s not the first to feel that was the only option after the tolerant campus Left showed its hypocrisy, and she won’t be the last.

Emerson students may be fortunate, however, as it sounds like the school’s administration is showing more sanity than many across the country. The administration claims to want to restore civility, and is taking steps such as introducing a “conservative thought” class this fall. Students also are trying to bring conservative speakers to the school.

Of course, the underlying issue won’t be fixed so easily.

Deep in their hearts, progressives believe they are following the One True Way — and that everyone who disagrees with them is scum. They excuse all sorts of terrible behavior by arguing that none of it compares to the imagined injustices they blame political opponents for unleashing each and every day.

This is a long-term cultural problem. Emerson’s administration can’t do much about it immediately other than treat all reports of such harassment equally. The targeted students deserve nothing less.

These pages have been reporting on the intellectual decline of American higher education, but maybe all is not lost. One near-miraculous sign of life is the appointment of constitutional law professor John Manning as the next dean of Harvard Law School.

Mr. Manning, who joined the law school faculty in 2004, takes over a post on July 1 that is typically held by a liberal, most notably by current Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. He is a well-known expert on administrative law and statutory interpretation who doesn’t hide his jurisprudential conservatism.

The new dean has served two stints at the Justice Department and clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, as well as the late Judge Robert Bork on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Following that distinguished tutelage, Mr. Manning has become one of the premier textualists in the legal academy, meaning that he emphasizes the importance of lawyers and judges reading and interpreting the plain text of a law.

Mr. Manning has been deputy dean and perhaps his competence in that role made him a natural choice for promotion. But in an academy that usually treats conservatives like the walking dead, credit Harvard for promoting on merit regardless of ideology.

Even though manipulated computer models and predictions of global warming/climate change have been demonstrated to be completely inaccurate, children are taught almost from the womb that the science is settled and anyone who questions the agenda is stupid and shouldn’t be listened to. No wonder they don’t ask any questions.

Kids are also indoctrinated to believe that anyone who wants to require photo IDs to vote is trying to oppress the vote and is a racist. I wonder why the kids won’t question the professor as to why those same people who can’t get photo IDs are required to have them for so many other things by the government.

The kids are taught that sanctuary cities are good and that people who want to enforce the borders are anti-immigrant, racists, xenophobes and want to harm women and children who just want to improve their lives. They should be taught that the U.S is a nation of laws, that politicians should uphold their oath to enforce the laws and that nations are not nations without borders and laws.

Students are repeatedly taught that capitalism and profits are bad, corporations are greedy and the rich don’t pay their fair share. They are taught that government is a benevolent entity that helps the poor. They should be taught that capitalism is what caused the United States to lift people up and that socialism destroys countries and holds people down, such as Venezuela, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.

They are rarely taught that the main reason for terrorism is that they want to destroy our way of life. It is not because of climate change, poverty, or lack of education. The leaders of terrorist organizations are idealists.

Colleges are almost wholly staffed by liberals with a few conservatives sprinkled in. Conservatives have been blocked frequently from speaking on campus. That is intentionally keeping alternative views from the students.

The reason students, Democrats and most reporters don’t seem to have any critical thinking ability is because they have been taught that to get along they must go along.

Editor’s Note: In our May 29 issue, we published a piece by Jay Nordlinger about DECA. The organization held its big international conference in late April. This week, Mr. Nordlinger has expanded his piece in his Impromptus. For Part I, go here. The series concludes today.

As I’ve mentioned, there are 16,000 kids here in Anaheim — 16,000 DECA-ites, doing their thing. And they reflect a great diversity. They come from every corner of America, and in every flavor, pretty much.

I meet Italian-American kids from New Jersey — right out of Central Casting. And Mexican-American kids from Albuquerque. And black kids from the Deep South — and from the Rust Belt cities.

In the DECA throng, there are many, many South Asian kids: the sons and daughters of immigrants from India. No doubt the fathers of a good number of them are motel owners, pharmacists, and engineers. No doubt these kids have been instilled with the values of hard work, entrepreneurship, and upward mobility.

One of the things that students here at the Anaheim conference do is run for office — the various offices of the wide DECA network. On an exhibition floor, there is a booth promoting the candidacy of one Vishwesh Ravva. He lives in Memphis and is running for vice-president of DECA’s southern region. Campaign slogan: “Wish for Vish.”

When I look at these kids in their blue blazers, with the DECA patch; when I see them planning for their future, and thinking about their place in the economy, and dreaming of what they might contribute — I think they are as American as Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer ever were.

The 200,000 DECA high-school students across the nation mirror the general high-school population: in the male-female ratio, for instance. But they differ in one respect: They tend to come from poorer families. They may have an unfortunate cycle to break out of. They may be hungry to get ahead and prove themselves.

There is a young woman here who has never been out of her hometown (in Pennsylvania). Neither have members of her family. She is here thanks to a scholarship from AT&T. Her world has been vastly widened.

When competing, DECA students must wear their blue blazers. Why? Well, the blazer looks kind of sharp. But also, it’s an equalizer. Rich kids, poor kids: They all look the same, essentially. No one need worry about the vexing question of dress.

On the exhibition floor, there are many booths, booths galore. Near the front are two branches of the military: the Army and the Navy. The Army features a slogan that goes, “Lead Faster.” I think what that means is: “Assume a leadership position faster in the Army than you would elsewhere.” But I’m not sure.

There are also booths representing business schools and institutes — including a hotel school in Lausanne. That sounds desirable, if you’re inclined toward the hotel business.

And there are all sorts of businesses, with booths. Take Sparkling Ice, a beverage line: “Never Too Busy to Get Fizzy.”

On this exhibition floor, businesspeople meet potential future employees. And students meet potential future employers. It’s win-win, in that capitalist way.

There is a gift shop, selling a variety of “spirit wear.” (In fact, I learn this term.) Many shirts and hoodies and so on have the DECA logo on them. There are also teddy bears, decked out in DECA shirts. I’m told that students and teachers love the “brand”: the DECA brand. There is a DECA culture, a DECA family feeling, and the spirit wear is part of it.

You can also buy flip cards, which are learning aids. Here is one from the “Marketing” pack: “Cost-Plus Pricing.” And on the back: “This type of pricing includes the variable costs associated with goods, as well as a portion of the fixed costs of operating the business.”

Here is one from the pack marked “Business Management + Administration”: “Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI).” “A process improvement technique for evaluating how efficiently a company is able to deliver technology products to its customers.”

I got a million of ’em. Or rather, DECA does.

In one patch of the exhibition floor, students are engaged in madly intense video games. Now, what I have called “games” are actually VBCs, or “Virtual Business Challenges.” These challenges are divided into several categories, including restaurants, hotels, retailing, and sports management.

Consider the restaurant challenge: Students have to figure out menu pricing, purchasing, staffing, a dining layout, a kitchen layout, etc. Moreover, they have to do it under the gun — on the clock — competing against others. They are zealously focused.

Later on, thousands of DECA kids will sit in front of hundreds of judges, participating in an array of competitions. There is an introductory level, which involves role-playing: How do you train a new employee? How do you deal with an angry customer? And at the top level, you submit a 30-page business prospectus. These kids like Shark Tank, the TV show? Now they’re really in a shark tank.

Some of the kids have businesses already. Horse-grooming, for example. I hear about a student from last year who started a business online. He sells vintage and limited-edition sneakers. And he has made a lot of money. This is an advance beyond the old lemonade stand (though kids still create and man those).

As for the judges, they come from myriad sectors of the business world. They may be with well-known companies, such as Marriott, Men’s Wearhouse, or Otis Spunkmeyer. They may be dot-com whizzes. Or franchisees. Or bankers. Or even officials of the Small Business Administration. Many are DECA alumni.

That’s the way it goes in DECA: one generation helping another.

When the Left Turns on Its Own

Bari Weiss https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-turns-on-its-own.html?_r=1

Bret Weinstein is a biology professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., who supported Bernie Sanders, admiringly retweets Glenn Greenwald and was an outspoken supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

You could be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Weinstein, who identifies himself as “deeply progressive,” is just the kind of teacher that students at one of the most left-wing colleges in the country would admire. Instead, he has become a victim of an increasingly widespread campaign by leftist students against anyone who dares challenge ideological orthodoxy on campus.

This professor’s crime? He had the gall to challenge a day of racial segregation.

Bret Weinstein probably didn’t intend to become a rallying point for conservatives and libertarians who take issue with the rampant political correctness that has infected American campuses. The self-described liberal probably finds himself in agreement with the typical SJW on most issues.

However, he dared to take issue with an event that kicked every white person off campus for the day, and that is all the evidence social justice jihadis needed to claim Weinstein is suddenly a white supremacist.

It’s hard to believe that a school offering feminist biology classes — yes, you read that correctly: check out “Reproduction: Gender, Race, and Power” and “Feminist Epistemologies: Critical Approaches to Biology and Psychology” — would have missed Weinstein’s intense hatred for everyone with a different amount of melanin, right?

Well, according to Rate My Professor, where reviews can get rather nasty, Weinstein had a rating of 4.2 out of 5, with 100 percent of students saying they would take a class from him again.

Sound like the record of a white supremacist on a progressive campus?

Not everyone loved him, such as the student who gave the following review:

I have a very different view of Bret’s teaching. He was very unorganized, and didnt know what he was going to teach until he came to class. I can honestly say that I learned nothing in this class, and was very disapointed with the content and quality. Instead of learning about adaptations of organisms, we played frisbee and watched movies.

Hmm. No white supremacy there.

Results of a standardized measure of reasoning ability show many students fail to improve over four years—even at some flagship schools, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of nonpublic results.

Freshmen and seniors at about 200 colleges across the U.S. take a little-known test every year to measure how much better they get at learning to think. The results are discouraging.

At more than half of schools, at least a third of seniors were unable to make a cohesive argument, assess the quality of evidence in a document or interpret data in a table, The Wall Street Journal found after reviewing the latest results from dozens of public colleges and universities that gave the exam between 2013 and 2016. (See full results.)

At some of the most prestigious flagship universities, test results indicate the average graduate shows little or no improvement in critical thinking over four years.
Some of the biggest gains occur at smaller colleges where students are less accomplished at arrival but soak up a rigorous, interdisciplinary curriculum.

For prospective students and their parents looking to pick a college, it is almost impossible to figure out which schools help students learn critical thinking, because full results of the standardized test, called the College Learning Assessment Plus, or CLA+, are seldom disclosed to the public. This is true, too, of similar tests.

Some academic experts, education researchers and employers say the Journal’s findings are a sign of the failure of America’s higher-education system to arm graduates with analytical reasoning and problem-solving skills needed to thrive in a fast-changing, increasingly global job market. In addition, rising tuition, student debt and loan defaults are putting colleges and universities under pressure to prove their value.

A survey by PayScale Inc., an online pay and benefits researcher, showed 50% of employers complain that college graduates they hire aren’t ready for the workplace. Their No. 1 complaint? Poor critical-reasoning skills.

“At most schools in this country, students basically spend four years in college, and they don’t necessarily become better thinkers and problem solvers,” said Josipa Roksa, a University of Virginia sociology professor who co-wrote a book in 2011 about the CLA+ test. “Employers are going to hire the best they can get, and if we don’t have that, then what is at stake in the long run is our ability to compete.”

International rankings show U.S. college graduates are in the middle of the pack when it comes to numeracy and literacy and near the bottom when it comes to problem solving. CONTINUE AT SITE

Harvard University rescinded admission offers for at least 10 incoming freshmen after they discovered the students had posted sexually explicit and otherwise offensive messages in a private Facebook chat.

The news was first reported by the Harvard Crimson on Sunday. A Harvard spokeswoman said the school doesn’t comment on individual admission decisions.

According to the Crimson, a handful of admitted students formed a messaging group online in December allowing them to send provocative and offensive memes and images to one another. The messages mocked sexual assault and the Holocaust, among other sensitive subjects. At least one joked that abusing children was sexually arousing, while another called the hanging of a Mexican child “piñata time.”

Social media has turned into a minefield for prospective college students and grads looking for jobs, as well as those already gainfully employed. Drunken party photos–especially for those still not of legal drinking age–or inappropriate racial comments can torpedo an otherwise solid candidate, admissions officials and HR experts warn.

Following the lead of career coaches, many high school guidance counselors now recommend students review their Facebook, Twitter , Instagram and other accounts for embarrassing or outright offensive material before submitting applications.

Many colleges create official Facebook groups for newly admitted students, allowing the high schoolers to begin meeting one another before arriving on campus. The “closed” Harvard College Class of 2021 group, managed by Harvard’s office of admissions and financial aid, had 1,518 members as of Monday.

The official group description says the school is “not responsible for any unofficial groups, chats, or the content within,” and reminds participants that the school “reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission under various conditions including if an admitted student engages in behavior that brings into question his or her honesty, maturity, or moral character.”

According to the Crimson, roughly 100 admitted students formed a private messaging group, not moderated by school officials, to share pop-culture memes, and then the more provocative chat was an offshoot of that group. At one point, the paper said, the group was titled “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens.”

The Crimson reported that admissions officials asked students to disclose images of the messages sent sometime in April, disinvited them to admitted-students weekend in late April and withdrew the offers of admission for at least 10 shortly thereafter.

Editor’s Note: In our May 29 issue, we published a piece by Jay Nordlinger about DECA. The organization held its big international conference in late April. This week, Mr. Nordlinger expands his piece in his Impromptus.

Sixteen thousand high-school students have converged here in Anaheim, Calif. — but they’re not going to Disneyland. Well, some of them are. But mainly they’re here to participate in a giant career-development conference. The theme of this conference is “Own Your Future.” The participants, the high-schoolers, are walking around in blue blazers, which have a patch that says “DECA.”

What does “DECA” stand for? “It stands for truth, justice, and the American way,” says John Fistolera, an official with DECA. It’s a good quip. “We’re about free enterprise,” says Fistolera, “and free enterprise is the American way.”

For decades, DECA has been known as “DECA,” plain and simple. (The word is pronounced “Decka” — like the record label, Decca.) But, once upon a time, the letters stood for “Distributive Education Clubs of America.”

The term “distributive education” is now antique — even more antique than “voc-ed” (for “vocational education”). The preferred term now is “career education,” or “career and technical education.” I myself had never heard the term “distributive education” until a few years ago, when I was interviewing Harold Hamm.

He is the 13th and last child of cotton sharecroppers in Oklahoma — and the leading oilman in the United States. When he was in high school, in the early 1960s, he took part in a D.E. program. It meant that you got school credit for working. And the classes you took probably related to the work you were doing. Young Hamm was working at a truck stop. And he wrote a paper on oil exploration.

His D.E. teacher was a man named Jewell Ridge. The teacher meant a lot to Hamm, and to many other students, most of them poor. When Ridge died, Hamm delivered a eulogy at his funeral. Recounting all this to me, Hamm got tears in his eyes.

For the piece I wrote about Harold Hamm, go here. (Incidentally, he has devoted a lot of the money he has earned to providing educational opportunity to the poor.)

DECA was founded in 1946, when going to college was not de rigueur. Young people needed skills for the work world. They still do, of course. But college is a box that increasingly must be checked. Most DECA students are college-bound. Nonetheless, the organization still serves kids who aren’t.

Here in Anaheim, I meet a young man who is going straight to the Air Force. Another one is joining the family business, to learn the ropes.

DECA has 200,000 members in 3,500 high schools. The members, I should make clear, are students. And they pay dues, as members of organizations often do. The dues are $8 a year. If a student can’t afford this sum, he can work for it, for example in a DECA-run school store.

There is also a college division, though smaller: 15,000 members in 275 colleges and universities.